Scenes from marraiges
by Darth Gojira
Summary: Scenes from the unhappy canon marriages of the main characters. Ginny, Ron, Neville, Luna, and Cho all realize how they failed
1. Not her hero

Harry Potter rolled his eyes. "I named him after two heroes of mine. He should be proud about it" Ginny sighed. She knew it was no use arguing with him. Even in bed, he wasn't argued with. It was always "Gin, I'd like to…." Or "Gin, could you please…." She had wondered why she couldn't be like Hermione, or mum, or even how she pretended to act to woo him back in her fifth year.

"James told me how he saw the other boys throwing his books up the Willow the other day, and nobody did anything" she planted her fists on her hips.

"Why didn't James do anything?" Harry asked

"Because he was too busy laughing. It took both Neville and Hagrid to subdue the Willow and now his books are held together by Spell-O-Tape and some binding charm"

"Hey, he learned a binding charm?"

"No, Lily taught it to him"

"Good on her" With that, he opened his Daily Prophet

"Harry?"

"Hm?"

"What are we going to do about Albus?"

"Can't Neville take care of him?"

"No, he's too busy trying to keep Hugo from breaking down. He needs support"

Harry put down his paper. "When I was his age, I was alone. I had to do everything myself. I had to deal with everything myself since the Durselys didn't give a fig. It was up to me. It made me learn how to deal with his" His voice raised. "It made me learn what it's like to be weak, and how not to surround myself with weaklings. It made a man out of me and it can make a man out of Albus"

This was her legend. This was her hero. This was the man she longed for year after year, making her do the impossible, the irrational, and the reckless. He made love brilliantly, but no matter how many times he never changed. And something inside her didn't want him to change. This was Harry. Her hero. Her "hero". "Her" "hero".

She blinked away tears. She hated tears. He hated tears. She hated being weak and helpless. So did he. A thought entered her mind. She had made so many others suffer to make her feel better-wasn't Harry doing the same?

"Hold on, the telephone's ringing" Harry broke her thoughts as he picked up the white phone from the lampstand. "Hello? Oh, Ron, what's up? Sure, I think I can make it Monday." Wasn't Monday their anniversary? "Oh, I didn't know George went there too" She had just told him about that yesterday! "I'll meet you there, right. Maybe we could try a different pub next week" Click.

"Tell you what, Gin. How about we go upstairs and…." Well, it was what he wanted from her. And only that. Yes, she was being exploited. Yes, she was codependent. She took what she could get when she could. She had given up everything and this is what she paid for. She hiked up her skirt flirtatiously. Harry leered.


	2. Too far

"You didn't care about my parents at all, did you?" Hermione Granger was crying. Again. At least she wasn't breaking things, Ron rolled his eyes. She caught that, and only Ron's quick reflexes avoided another bout of lacerations as the silverware just missed his face by inches. He'd been hit before, and he didn't like it.

He was through with pretending. He was tired to pretending he could just shoulder his burdens. Pretending his relationship wasn't rushed at all. Pretending he could turn into something he wasn't. Ron loved Hermione, but there was no way either of them would make it work now. It was too little, too late.

"You just let them die there just so you could go to your damn Quidditch" she shrieked. He knew perfectly well he was guilty. He was guilty of a lot. He'd been questioning himself and pillorying himself, but the world couldn't help but bury its claws into him and never let go.

"I went to their funeral. I was there when they were buried. I was there!" Ron shouted back at her.

"Not once were you with me. Harry was there. Neville was there. Ginny was there." Her tears burned him as much as they did her. With that, she turned around and rushed down the hall and into the bedroom, locking the door behind her.

What was holding him back from divorce? Love? No, he loved her too much to keep her in this disaster. Fear? He stifled the thought. He was never a coward, and would never be one. But as her sobs rang in his ears, he couldn't avoid the conclusion that it was all about his pride. All about making all those years count. All about denying his own faults.

It was the last think he wanted to think about. His parents called him a waste. His friends thought of him as a waste. The girl he loved thought he was a waste. And all his attempts to prove him worthy looked like there were crumbling. Bugger.

Maybe I'm trying to be something I'm not, Ron mused, maybe I'm just a failure at not being who I am, and I got the whole thing backwards. But what? He couldn't help but feel like everything he had was crumbling. All he could be was "Harry Potter's best mate", and just be a sidekick. A sidekick, that's what he was. Second rate. Hermione's husband. The Weasley's youngest son. Ron from Gryffindor. It was never "Ron's best friend", "Ron's wife", "Ron's family", "Ron's house".

Maybe he was being selfish, but would it hurt if he was just himself and not anyone's anything? Was that the price of being friends with anyone? He'd be nothing without his friends and family, but Harry was in the same position and he was everyone's hero. Whose hero was he? Not Hermione's, the one person he wanted to be a hero to.

But if he divorced her, he'd be the villain for throwing her away. He'd crush her heart. If they continued this lie, it would still crush her.

It was a stupid idea. A stupid, stupid idea. He didn't want to put the responsibility on Hermione again, but it would have to be her. He'd lost too much. He didn't want to break her heart; he didn't want to be the one who hurt her. Still, his prospects didn't look good. Either break it now, or wait more agonizing years.

Should he just go to her and tell her it's over? No, that would be even stupider. She'd only go deeper into despair, especially now when she was having another breakdown. He considered going into the liquor cabinet for some relief, but he knew it would only get him angrier and more depressed, and it wouldn't last even when it did help him.

Damned it you do, damned if you don't. He sat down in the chair in the living room, staring at the floor. He had to do something, anything. He looked at the bookshelf. Nothing but Hermione's books. A lot of them were for his birthday or Christmas, never opened and gathering dust. The others were the ones he got for Hermione, also never opened. Could they really be so blind to each other?

One book caught his eye. It was the one Fred and George gave him; the last thing Fred ever gave to him. _Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches__. Of course, he had put a false sleeve and charmed it to look like a biography of Quidditch champion Hylas Julian, but it was the same book._

Where did Harry leave his copy? Ron was the first to admit to being unperceptive, but he knew Harry and Ginny weren't exactly a happy couple either. Maybe it destroyed his best friend and his sister the same way it destroyed him and the woman he loved.

For once in his life, Ronald Weasley was pensive and thoughtful. Then he took the book off the shelf.

"I'm just sick of lying" Ron snarled at the book, throwing it into the fireplace. He knew burning it could never undo the consequences of their decision, but he felt better anyway. He just stared into the fire. He'd just tell Hermione he lent the book to someone else. Another lie, but he knew the truth about that book would hurt her even more. Living a lie was something he was used to. He just wished it would end.


	3. Ghosts

Dead people could easily overshadow the living. Neville had known that for years. He had seen his grandparents die in front of him. His parents wasted away while he could only helplessly watch. Old friends and mentors murdered. Voldemort and Bellatrix were dead, but they still haunted his dreams. Of all the specters, it was Gran's that was the worst.

"Neville, promise me to marry someone who can support you"

"But gran, I want to marry someone I love"

"I've already arranged something with the Abbots"

"But I don't love her"

"You can and you will, like anything else. You must"

"I'll do it, then…"

"Of course you will"

And then she was gone

If he hadn't spent the past ten years crying, he would have cried at the memory. Poor Hannah had enough to deal with. She had her own problems. He knew what she was going through. He had spent much of his life loving someone who could never return it, and he knew the kind of agony Hannah suffered after her first joy. He wished he could annul it, he wished he could make Hannah happy, he wished he had never made that promise, but there was nothing he could do.

He put down his quill, unable to continue writing the letter to Hogwarts. It was pretty loud, anyway, the Leaky Cauldron's patrons having a raucous party in contrast with his somber mood. While he had inherited his grandmother's estate, he felt compelled to set up with his wife. Neville know she'd come home at the end of the night, crying and exhausted. Seamus and Dean had offered to take over the bar, but Hannah had spent too much time before she had realized she had made a mistake.

He didn't spend much time with his mates anymore. Too much work to do, most of it self-imposed in order to make him forget about everything. Normally, the sheer amount would have frightened him, but it was the best alternative to trying in vain to make his wife happy. He could only focus what he could do, and it was impossible to salvage his marriage

He had banished his fear of Snape after the wretched man's death, but his grandmother haunted his dreams. He couldn't hold it against her. She wanted a grandson to be proud of. She wanted someone who was loyal and true and brave and willing to make a sacrifice. He hoped he had done enough to make that mold, but the regret tore at him the way it did every night. He should've pointed out to her that his father married for love, but he didn't want to confront a dying woman. He should've gone to his friends for help, but he already knew they had their own problems. He should've told Hannah he was not the man she wished him to be, but he didn't want to break her heart.

Neville broke it anyway, simply by existing. Sometimes he would hear her scream in the bar, see tears in her eyes whenever he looked upon her face. This night it seemed calm, and he was desperately praying that she would find peace. Sometimes he thought he should try to save his friends from their disastrous marriages, but he remembered he couldn't even save himself or his wife.

He tried to help their children. He and Hannah never could make them. They had made love once many years before, but their hearts were not in it, and they never tried again. Harry's and Ron's kids were the only children he had in his life, and he did all he could at the school to make their lives a little easier. He couldn't save them from their parents.

Growing up without the love of their parents can ruin anyone. He saw Harry fall to it, and then Hermione after the war. The Weasleys had an unhappy marriage themselves. Harry told him that even the likes of Snape and Voldemort had become monsters because of their miserable childhoods. He didn't want the same thing to happen for him, and Hannah knew it as good as he did.

All he could do is try to hold her when the night ended, tell her lies about how things would get better and they were happy. She knew he was a terrible liar, but she accepted it simply to stop hurting.

He dreaded the moment she would come to him, begging for love he could never give. But he dreaded her suffering even more. All he could do is lie, and all she could do is believe it. Hermione had told him once about her struggle whether to lie for the sake of others, or to keep her integrity but hurt her friends. Lying just didn't seem natural.

Now, it was his only pastime. True, he was a herbologist. True, he was a promising young professor at Hogwarts. Yet, despite all this, he felt had had lost more than he had gained. He sighed and got out of his chair. Seamus had turned to drink after his marriage, but Neville couldn't drink without being reminded of his wife. It brought more pain than it relieve. Gran would have encouraged him to eat, but he just could never work up the appetite. Hermione told him to work, but he knew it wasn't helping her out in her relationship, and it wasn't helping him in his.

Longbottom walked over the window overlooking Diagon Alley. He saw happy wizards and witches talking, embracing, haggling like friends and loved ones should do. He had missed that part of life. He had but two vows left to keep. The first was not to tell the truth to Hannah until she asked for a divorce. The second was not to become Snape; not to give in to his bitterness and hatred but to genuinely care for his students. He was no one's husband, but becoming a father could yet be done. The thought comforted him as he simply watched the children playing in the street. God bless them.


End file.
